By Hans Ebert It’s the technique not the idea. It’s something my mentor in advertising- Keith Reinhard- used to make all his creative directors understand, especially during a time when when the art director was more interested in how “beautiful” a print ad should look like and the copywriter was asked to shorten the headline [...]

By Hans Ebert Listening to “Work”, the new recording by Rihanna, and then hearing a brilliant Remix of Drake’s “Hotline Bling” recently in a club, one had to wonder whether, like everything else, if writing songs for a living and trying to make this a financially viable career, there’s a need to rethink one’s modus [...]

By Hans Ebert In the Rant section of the SCMP’s Sunday Magazine, the writer mentioned being hit in the face last Friday and thrown out of a club by one of those Hong Kong princelings with the powerful big daddy’s surname and money behind them and who are always seen scouring the local club life [...]

By Hans Ebert It takes a lot for a train to cry and it takes a lot for a dam to burst and, gawd knows, it takes having to sidestep so many half-baked promises, and flimflam fakers to get to halfway near nowhere as a- I don’t really know, anymore. A chanteuse? Recording artist- and [...]

There is just so much music out there, and yes, not all of it is that great. Then again, greatness is in the ear of Van Gogh and the psyche of Rasputin, but because of all the clutter, some real gems fall through the cracks. Guitarist Wil Cajucom is one of those rough diamonds found [...]

There’s a kind of hush and mush and beatz and paddling upstream all the time with Tidal, Spotify, and now Apple, but nowhere are their the Rock Guitar Gods who once strode across the world with the brontosaurus stomp of their They Ain’t Heavy They’re Our Brothers Bands with names like Led Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge, [...]

It’s the start of the Year of the Ram, which some call the Sheep and others, the Goat, and despite the usual celebrations and floats and messages of health and wealth and all that other good stuff, it is a very quiet Hong Kong. No, not a “chilled” Hong Kong, but a worried and kinda [...]

A friend of mine sent me a link to John Denver singing his own song, Leaving On A Jet Plane, first a hit for Peter, Paul and Mary in the Sixties, then, Chantal Kreviazuk. and, most recently, was recorded by the Cast of Glee. The yard goes on forever- and so does a great song. [...]

My old friend Scott wrote in recently about the need for songs- you know, ones with real melodies, soaring choruses and with words that make sense and lines that rhyme. In his email, Scott mentioned all those legendary Brill Building Songwriters- Carole King, Neil Diamond, Gerry Goffin etc- and how a duo like the Jayesslee [...]